'The Swamp' Exists in Trump's Golf Courses

From Esquire

For much of the 2016 campaign, The Swamp served as handy shorthand for the mire of lobbyists, big money, and political operatives, into which Washington, D.C. - a town built on an actual swamp - has been sinking for decades. Donald Trump, the titan of industry who knew how the system worked but couldn't be corrupted by it because he didn't need the money - would finally drain it.

Except even after the coronation of Don the Drainer, the swamp is swampier than ever, and it seems to be settling in President Trump's golf clubs.

That's at least according to a report Wednesday from USA TODAY, which details how "lobbyists, contractors and others who make their living influencing the government pay President Trump’s companies for membership in his private golf clubs, a status that can put them in close contact with the president." Later, the good folks reporting the story were even more direct in their assessment:

Essentially, this has the appearance of a play-for-play arrangement with the President of the United States. Oh, you're looking to secure a defense contract? If you buy a membership to Mar-a-Lago or Trump National, you might just run into the president and get some face time with him. You want to kill an EPA plan to outlaw your pesticide, which studies indicate may cause neurological damage in children? You might just get the ear of the World's Most Powerful Man in between the incessant mulligans.

Those hypotheticals aren't random. In a stroke of Trump-era reporting genius, theUSA TODAY reporters identified 4,500 members of Trump golf clubs through social media postings and a website that lets golfers track their handicaps - but only if they register with a golf club of which they're a member. Among those identified were executives at top defense contracting firms, "a lawyer helping Saudi Arabia fight claims over the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks," and the head of a pesticide trade group that successfully prevented a ban on an insecticide that scientists have indicated could match that description above. Overall, the paper found at least 50 executives whose companies hold government contracts and 21 lobbyists or trade group officials are members of Trump's clubs.

That includes Robert Mehmel, a member of Trump's Bedminster, New Jersey, club whose factory Trump visited to mark his 100th day in office. Mehmel also owns an electronics company that did $54 million in contracts with the U.S. military last year. Mehmel stood behind Trump as he signed two separate executive orders, and also played at Bedminster on seven separate days since May. On five of those occasions, Trump was visiting the club the same day. In fairness, that's not altogether remarkable: As USA TODAY reminds us, Trump has visited one of his clubs on one quarter of his days in office.

There's no evidence that Trump club members have secured true quid pro quo arrangements, or that Trump has seen direct benefits from these circumstances. The club members USA TODAY reached denied pursuing memberships or showing up for business gain. But that's been made difficult to verify by the fact that the membership rolls at Trump clubs are kept secret - necessitating USA TODAY's very 21st-century sleuthing - and that unlike any president or presidential candidate since Watergate, Trump has refused to release his tax returns.

We do know Trump's clubs are some of the most lucrative pillars of his sprawling business, to the tune of $600 million in revenue in 2015 and 2016. A big ol' slice of that comes from membership fees, which include an initiation fee of $100,000 or more, plus yearly pay-ups. But we don't know how much of that Trump sees, or what, if anything, he's willing to serve up in return. We also don't know who's visiting him, thanks to his administration's decision to keep visitor logs to both his clubs and the White House under lock and key - a break from his predecessor. That might be about to change, however, at least to some extent: In July, a federal court ordered the government to release the Mar-a-Lago visitor logs.

It's this kind of transparency that has long fueled concerns about Trump's conflicts of interest, a constant issue when the President of the United States insists on clinging to a large, multifaceted business with multinational reach while he serves in office. Trump set up a "trust" arrangement for his business and pledged his sons would run it without his input, but the trust device proved to be a sham, and Eric Trump - not the sharpest grifter in the family - has already said publicly that he'll continually brief his father on the family business. Trump the Elder promised his business would not pursue deals abroad while he's in office, again to avoid conflicts of interest when it comes to making foreign policy. But last month we learned the Organization is involved in a deal in the United Arab Emirates.

In fact, the administration is essentially operating under a layer of conflicts. Secretary of Everything Jared Kushner is running around the White House - and the world - with an ACME anvil of debt hanging over his head. That's thanks to some truly horrendous business decisions he made while he was still a Real Estate Mogul in the vein of his father-in-law. That might explain why Kushner's sister and the rest of the firm were over in China hocking visas to potential investors who might inject a little capital and keep the family firm afloat in a sea of debt. They explicitly made reference to the Son-in-Law-in-Chief's ties to the president, something they later apologized for, but nothing beats the tagline for the event: “Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States.”

Meanwhile, Trump has hired Scott Pruitt to run the EPA. Pruitt isa staunch ally for the fossil fuel companies he is tasked with regulating. Pruitt once received a letter from one such outlet complaining about an EPA regulation, pasted his own letterhead on it, and sent it along to...the EPA. He also got involved in upwards of a dozen lawsuits against the agency - which, again, he now leads. In that capacity, he's rolled back all kinds of rules and regulations on dangerous chemicals and corporate behavior that pose a hazard to the public - like, say, that aforementioned pesticide with a new lease on life.

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Those are just department heads. The Swamp runneth over in this administration, particularly in the form of lobbyists and political insiders that were deployed during the presidential transition to serve as "beachheads" at various agencies and departments. Many were hired on temporarily, but nearly as many have stuck around in a permanent capacity - largely out of view, and without being subject to approval from the legislative branch. A vital ProPublica report from last week, which Charles P. Pierce wrote about for Esquire, details just how blatant and grotesque the conflicts are:

None of this is likely to change the minds of supporters who would likely still back the president if he jumped out of his motorcade to kick their dogs. They bought the president's swamp-draining shtick because they knew him as the helicopter-riding mogul of The Apprentice, not the nickel-and-diming charity runner or the Atlantic City casino hustler.

Trump has never been content to merely be rich. If you're never rich enough, or if rich is never enough, you always have another grift in you.

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